Oh shit, I thought.
I ran down a spiral stairway at the side of the buttress. I heard the car stop above me. The stairway went on and on and on and on spiralling all the time and I thought when it levels out I’m not going be able to stop going round; they’ll find me whirling round in a tight little circle unable to go straight. I hit the bottom and sheer terror proved a very efficient course-straightener. I raced across a gantry slung underneath the stonework and went down another stairway set against a metal-frame building on the far side of the buttress. Footsteps clanged behind me.
I came out on a broad balcony and dodged through a doorway and down some more steps into a sort of hanger where old gliders sat tilted like great ghostly stiff-winged birds and a bunch of little bats started chattering and flying round my head. Footsteps above, then behind. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. The bats were kicking up a hell of a racket.
I spotted a ladder against one wall leading down through the floor and I ran for it. Somebody shouted behind me; the footsteps slapped loud. Something went, Bang! and a glider next to me exploded with flame and lost a wing; the blast of air was warm and almost knocked me off my feet.
I threw myself at the ladder, held the sides and dropped, sliding down without using my feet at all, hitting the floor and twisting my ankle.
I was in some kind of circular platform slung under the glider building. Nothing but air underneath and nowhere to go. I looked back at the ladder. The footsteps were right above me.
I heard a noise like quick, distant surf, and a huge black shape lifted from under the platform on wings longer than I’m tall. It wavered in the air alongside then grasped at the thin metal rail round the platform on the far side from the ladder, its talons gripping the rail while its wings beat quickly and almost silently back and forward.
I could hear somebody coming down the ladder, breathing hard.
Here! shouted the black shape at the other side of the platform. I’d thought it was a bird but it was more like a giant bat. Its wings clapped in and out in and out.
Quickly! it said.
I think if the brothers coming down the ladder hadn’t shot at me in the hanger I wouldn’t have gone, but they had so I did.
I ran for the big bat. It held its feet out. I grabbed its ankles and it wrapped its talons round my wrists making me shout with the bone-crunching pain while it pulled me off the platform, cracking my knees off the rail.
We twisted and dropped like the thing couldn’t carry me and I screamed, then it spread its wings with a snap and I nearly lost my grip as we curved out and away. Light sparkled above me and I heard the bat cry out but I was too busy looking down at the dark fields in the allure, 5 or 600 metres below and thinking well, if I die, there’s still another seven lives to go. Except I didn’t think that was right somehow, I reckoned whatever trouble I was in went beyond this life and I wasn’t guaranteed another seven lives or even one.
I held on tight, but the light crackled again and the bat thing juddered in the air and cried out again and I smelled smoke. We lurched and side-slipped towards the wall of the great hall, then fell like the proverbial, and in a scream of air and a scream from me dipped below the allure and the parapet and went on down till we were level with the lower bretasche, where the bat wheeled round so hard I lost my grip on its scaly legs and only its steel-like clasp on my wrists stopped me from falling to the roof of the second level tower underneath.
Felt like my arms were about to pop out of my sockets. I’d have screamed but the breath was gone from me.
The air shrieked round my ears as we plummeted between the great tower and the second level wall, down into a layer of cloud where I couldn’t see a damn thing and it was freezing cold, then we turned in what I thought was the direction of the tower and out of the mist loomed this bleeding great rock wall. I closed my eyes.
We twisted once, twice and I went – phew – to myself but when I opened my eyes we was still heading straight for naked stonework. O fuck, I thought, but by then I’d decided I’d rather die with my eyes open. At the last moment we lifted, I saw hanging bunches of foliage strung from the machicolation above and a instant later we crashed into the babil; my shoulder was wrenched and I was thrown off the bat and into the babil, grabbing at leaves and twigs and branches and slipping and falling down through it.
The bat beat furiously, shouting, Hold on! Hold on! while I tried to get a hold on the damn stuff.
Hold on! it shouted again.
I’m bloody trying too! I yelled.
You safe?
Just about, I said, hugging a big strand of babil like it was a long-lost mum or something, not able to look behind but still hearing the big bat flap and beat at my back.
I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more, the bat says. You must save yourself now. They’re looking for you. Beware the crypt. Keep out of things! Erch! Erch! I must go. Farewell, human.
Yeah, and to you, I shouted, turning round to look at it. And thanks!
Then the big bat dropped, and I saw it disappear in the mist, falling away straight down, trailing smoke and then just before I lost sight of it curving away following the circumference of the tower, beating hard but looking weak and still falling.
Disappeared.
I crawled into the darkness of the babil, nursing my aches.
Oh dear Bascule, I said to myself. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
I spent the night in the foliage, constantly dreaming of flying through the air with Ergates in my hand but then dropping her and her tumbling away and me not being able to catch her and my wings coming off and me falling too and screaming through the air, then waking clutching the branches, shivering and covered in sweat.
So here I am, looking up at the fast-tower and I’ve spent some time so far this morning trying to pluck up the courage to go straight back into the crypt to find out what’s going on and look for poor little Ergates and this time take no nonsense… and I’ve also spent some time vowing never to even think of the bleeding crypt again and deciding not to decide about it for now and so instead I’m just sitting here wondering what I’m to do in general and not able to come to a decision on that score neither.
I turn over in my little nest again and look down through the branches and this time I freeze and stare, because I can see this big animal coming climbing up through the babil; it’s bleeding huge, the size of a bear and it’s got thick black fur with streaks of green on it and it’s got big shiny black claws and it’s looking at me with two little beady eyes and a funny pointed head and it’s coming up the branch I’m on, straight towards me.
Oh shit, I hear myself say, looking round to see if there’s a way to escape.
There isn’t. Oh shit.
The animal opens its mouth. Its teeth are the size of my fingers.
… Stay where you are! it hisses.
Next original section
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TRANSLATION – FIVE – 4
Original text
I stare at the big black beast coming up the branch toward me.
I’ve got a gun! I shout (this is a lie).
… I very much doubt that, the thing says. It stops all the same smiling and showing its teeth again. But anyway, it says, stop being silly. I’m here to help you.
I’ll bet, I says, glancing round and still trying to figure out a way of escape.
Yes. If I’d wanted to harm you I could have shaken you out of there five minutes ago.
Oh yeah? I says, hanging on tighter. Well maybe you don’t want to kill me, maybe you just want to capture me.
… In which case I’d have dropped on you from above, you silly boy.
Oh you would, would you?
…Yes. You’re Bascule, aren’t you?
Perhaps, I says. And who or what are you when you’re at home then?
… I’m a sloth, it says proudly. You can call me Gaston.